Burnaway is excited to announce our 2023 editorial themes. We invite proposals for long-form essays, features, interviews, and artist projects tied to three themes that will organize the magazine’s publishing activities throughout the year. Unlike years past, we are shifting our model to center one theme every four months, to intensify and deepen the magazine’s editorial focus.

For Winter 2023, the first theme is CONSPIRACY. Conspiracy is defined as an agreement between two or more people. The word is perhaps best understood in the phrase: “I sing in unison.” Con– means “with” or “together,” and spiro means “I breathe,” literally translating to “I breathe together with others.”
Our first theme for the year interrogates the experiences that construct our lives, systems of relation, and landscapes across the South. Along those lines, we are thinking about absurdities in nature, doubles/dopplegangers, grassroots organizing and mutual aid, unexplained or rarely discussed phenomena, queering archives and maps, the clandestine, music genres and bands, trends and *core, forgery, fakes, and microdosing crime. Although we have started publishing CONSPIRACY pieces, we are willing to accept pitches for CONSPIRACY through February 25. To pitch, please email [email protected] with CONSPIRACY in the subject line.
Through March 30, we will be accepting pitches for the additional two themes, CAMOUFLAGE and COLOR. More information about those themes soon.
As always, we also accept pitches year-round for long form interviews, profiles, reviews and essays that are not related to one of our three yearly themes. See our pitch guide for more information. We accept pitches related to the following states and associated artists: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, and Puerto Rico.